The elevator pinged and the doors opened.
The four public servants stepped out and moved quickly down the corridor toward the conference and meeting room on the south side of the building. The corridor was as tired-looking as those in police headquarters, Thurn thought. It even smelled of the same cleaning products.
“Do we know this is the right way?” she asked.
“I’ve been here before,” Kant replied.
She didn’t ask the obvious follow-up question. She was afraid that Björn Kant was yet another member of the minister’s hunting team, and that if she asked he would be forced to admit it. Better, she thought, not to know.
They came to a door with a frosted glass panel. They could hear voices from the other side, and Kant knocked.
“You can wait by the elevator,” he said to the two police officers, who nodded obediently.
Thurn sighed.
They stepped into the room.
It was smaller than Thurn had expected. The curtains were drawn, hiding what had to be a fantastic view of the capital, with City Hall and possibly even Riddarfjärden in the distance. There were five men sitting around the white conference table, all wearing dark suits, white shirts and ties. Director Henrik Nilsson, the man the police were looking for, had clearly been giving some kind of presentation. He was standing by a whiteboard and stopped to turn to them.
“Björn?” he exclaimed in surprise.
“Hello, Henrik,” Kant replied.
Henrik Nilsson shook his head in confusion.
“What are you doing here? I’m… Björn, could you wait in my office, I’ll come as soon as I’m done here? Fifteen, twenty minutes? I’m… a little busy, as you can see.”
He gestured to the men sitting at the table, all of whom looked equally surprised and were staring at the prosecutor and the prosecutor’s pretty companion.
Kant hesitated. “No, I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple, Henrik. I can explain… If you give me a couple of minutes, I can…”
The prosecutor nodded toward the corridor.
“A couple of minutes? Now?” the suspect said with a forced laugh. “Like I said, Björn, I’m in the middle of an, er, let’s say… a presentation of sorts. And I really need to finish it.”
He turned to the men around the table for support, but they didn’t say a word.
“I’m sorry, Henrik, but this can’t wait,” said Kant, trying to drum up some courage.
“Look,” Nilsson said, this time with a note of sharpness and irritation in his voice, “I’ll ask you for the last time, please go to my office and wait there, and I’ll come as soon as I’m done here.”
Caroline Thurn, who had been standing behind Prosecutor Kant until this point, had already lost her patience after their opening exchange. She had tried to help put the prosecutor on the right track using her body language, but now she stepped forward and said, loudly: “Henrik Nilsson, you’re under arrest. You’re going to come with us to police headquarters where we will conduct a preliminary interview.”
Nilsson’s jaw dropped.
“This is the most ridiculous damn…”
He shook his head. He didn’t have the words.
“Henrik,” said Kant, trying to soften Thurn’s lack of tact, “we do actually have to…”
“Get out!” Nilsson shouted, suddenly finding his tongue. “My lawyers are going to—”
But Thurn couldn’t bear to listen any longer.
Where the handcuffs had come from wasn’t something the prosecutor would be able to explain afterward, but she stepped straight past him and snapped one of them around Henrik Nilsson’s wrist. It all happened so quickly that the director barely had time to realize what was happening.
Caroline Thurn quickly fastened the second cuff around the wrist of prosecutor Björn Kant.
She looked at the two friends with a broad smile.
“I’m going back to police headquarters now,” she said. “And wherever I go, the key goes too. Do stop by and see us.”
With that, she left the room. She walked toward the elevators and the two waiting officers.
“The others are just coming,” she said. “We might as well wait here.”
10
Michel Maloof had chosen the soccer field in Fittja as their meeting place. Soccer fields were always a possibility, as were any other open spaces where you could be sure there was no one eavesdropping behind a bush. Maloof had said that he had followed up on the tip from the man with the dogs and that it was something Sami should hear with his own ears. But he hadn’t said any more than that.
That was why Sami Farhan was waiting in a parking lot in Fittja, in the shadows behind a garage. One by one, the lights had gone out in the windows of the hulking tower on the hill, the enormous block of apartments that had been built during the fifties and sixties as part of the government’s political experiment, an extensive public housing program known as the Million Project. Every time Sami went to places like Bredäng, Botkyrka or Flemingsberg, he was reminded of exactly why he now lived in Södermalm.
Out here was his past, not his future.
It was ten thirty in the evening. Though he was wearing two sweaters under his coat, his clothes were no protection against the cold. March had arrived, but the mercury was still hitting new lows.
Michel Maloof had said he would be there at quarter past ten, and, like always, Sami had arrived in good time. He had been waiting almost half an hour now. His impatience was worse than the cold. An inheritance from his father, his mother always said. A quick run around the park would warm him up and get rid of his restlessness, but who knew which eyes were on him in the tower block up there.
Another five minutes passed before a gray Seat pulled into the parking lot. Sami sighed gently. He wanted to be home before midnight, Karin had already been suspicious when he said that he had to help out on the cold buffet for the second night in a row. It wasn’t a lie that he worked extra shifts at his uncle’s place in Liljeholmen, and the money it had brought in so far was proof of that. But his wages from the cold buffet were barely enough to cover the rent, diapers and gruel. It was Karin who kept the family together, both financially and socially. She was one of Stockholm’s many struggling small-business owners, who, along with a friend, had opened a dressmaker’s shop on Maria Prästgårdsgata. They had been lucky and skilled enough to win a couple of big repeat customers, which helped them build up a certain level of stability and success. But things varied, of course, and some weeks were better than others. All the same, the majority of her months were considerably better than Sami’s.
The nondescript Seat parked next to an Audi some way from the garage, and Sami immediately recognized the short, compact shape of Maloof as he moved around the car and opened the passenger’s side door. The woman who climbed out was wearing a bulky blue down jacket and a white knitted hat. Sami couldn’t make out much more than that from where he was standing.
He made himself visible by stepping forward out of the shadows. Maloof waved, and a few minutes later they were face-to-face.
“Alexandra, this is Sami. Sami, Alexandra Svensson,” Maloof introduced them.
Sami took off a glove and shook Alexandra’s hand. She looked away. If it had been light, Maloof was convinced he would have seen her blush.
“So… well… you can keep us company for a while?” Maloof suggested, as though they had only bumped into one another by chance.
Sami nodded and smirked. “What a coincidence,” he said. “Bumping into you two here. You on the way back to your place, Michel?”
“Right, right. Some hot tea… with honey,” Maloof replied, completely without irony.