Then he would have to give up his daughter.
Then he would have to kill his daughter for a second time.
And in that moment, the screams break free from the walls. The clear, piercing screams which had been stored in the porous walls, clad with gold-coloured foam. They screech right into Rajko Nedic’s ears, bursting his eardrums.
He says: ‘You’ll never find out.’
And for the first time in his life, the great man feels great.
The man looks over his shoulder. Out through the window. He doesn’t like that gaze. He might catch sight of Sonja when she comes out of the bank. Maybe he’ll recognise her.
But all the man sees is a fleeting glimpse of eight unmistakable figures, led by a young, short-haired woman. They’re creeping along Hornsgatan, nearing the door.
The man sighs, binds Rajko Nedic’s hands behind him using the silver tape, and takes a small metal box from his pocket. He pushes it into Nedic’s mouth and tapes his jaws shut. He winds the tape around his jaws like a corpse. The great man can feel the little box on his tongue. It tastes of steel. He can’t spit it out.
‘An old promise,’ says the golden one, disappearing.
Sara Svenhagen is following her men. In the stairwell, they meet a well-built man with cropped hair and clear blue eyes. He nods to them. As though to colleagues, she thinks to herself. They wave him past and continue up the stairs.
On the fourth floor, they take out their service weapons. They find the door marked Ahlström. They gather around it.
Then they see that it has been kicked open. It isn’t closed. It only looks like it’s closed.
They press up against the wall. Pistols raised. Close to their bodies. They kick the door open.
They see blood. Lots of blood. Three bodies. And two silver mummies on a sofa.
And a man on his knees by the window. Sara recognises Rajko Nedic. As soon as the room has been secured, she goes over to him. He’s deathly pale behind the silver tape. He’s nodding his head strangely. A gesture. She reaches for the tape. He shakes his head frantically and continues to make the nodding gesture.
Then she understands.
The gesture is telling her: get out, for Christ’s sake.
She reacts like lightning. Gets her men out into the stairwell.
Once they’ve gone, the great man feels great for the second time in his life. Then his head explodes.
Sara Svenhagen hears the blast from out in the stairwell. She both understands and doesn’t understand it. They return. Cautiously.
Rajko Nedic is lying by the window. The silver tape has split over his mouth. Blood is trickling out. Sara forgets all her caution. She runs over and unwinds the tape.
His tongue falls out. A bloody lump.
Someone has blown the tongue out of Rajko Nedic’s mouth.
She stands up. Takes several staggering steps over to the window. She has to get some fresh air. It doesn’t work; she can’t open the window. There isn’t any fresh air to get.
A shimmering green bluebottle nosedives towards her forehead.
She throws up on the windowpane in the flat with the soundproofed walls.
They leave the bank, each clasping the other’s hand. Hard, hard. A full-to-bursting bag dangles between them.
She casts a quick, furtive, shy glance over the street. Four floors up in the building opposite. She sees vomit running down the window.
She smiles. It’s an appropriate farewell.
45
SARA SVENHAGEN WAS pale and worn out. She was sitting at the front, on Hultin’s desk, swinging her legs. He thought it was charming. But then, he was also an old chauvinist.
What she had just told them wasn’t quite as charming. But it was illuminating. Horribly illuminating.
Aside from Gunnar Nyberg and Kerstin Holm, everyone was there. The World Police and Fire Games were getting off to a false start with a few events. At 3 p.m. the following day, the opening ceremony would take place. Even if there wouldn’t be as many competitors as planned, and even if the organisers had mismanaged it to the point of being put on trial, Stockholm Stadium would be full of policemen and women from all corners of the earth.
‘So you met Niklas Lindberg on the stairs on the way up?’ asked Arto Söderstedt.
‘Yeah,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘Though we didn’t know that there was a Niklas Lindberg. The walls between us have been much too high.’
She cast a glance at Jorge Chavez. He was pale and worn out, but met her eyes. He looked deeply sorry.
‘Has Rajko Nedic said anything?’ asked Viggo Norlander.
Sara Svenhagen smiled grimly. It wasn’t a smile, it just looked like one.
‘No,’ she said. ‘He can’t talk. He’ll never be able to talk again.’
‘But he’s alive?’
‘Yes. He’s in Söder hospital. They’re trying to patch up his mouth, but his tongue couldn’t be saved.’
‘A precisely calculated charge,’ said Hjelm. ‘Has Daddy said anything about the explosive?’
She gave him a dark look.
‘Yes, Daddy said that it’s the same explosive. And Rajko Nedic is under arrest for sexual assault of children, as well as distribution of child pornography. I’m sure you can add to the charges eventually.’
‘The thing with Gillis Döös and Max Grahn is interesting,’ said Söderstedt. ‘Former Security Service men, about to crack an earlier investigation for us, they were also supplying Nedic with information on the investigation?’
‘They call themselves “security consultants”. But they don’t seem to have got hold of much.’
‘Overpaid consultants are a sign of our times,’ Söderstedt concluded.
‘And the “policeman” is Ludvig Johnsson,’ said Hultin. ‘He was blackmailing Nedic because he’d found out he was a paedophile. Now he’s on holiday. And absolutely no one has any idea where?’
‘No, someone does,’ said Sara Svenhagen. ‘He’s there now.’
‘Gunnar, my Gunnar,’ Hultin nodded woefully. ‘Do you think he’s in any danger? Do you think Johnsson might decide to bump Nyberg off to get away?’
‘No,’ Sara said definitively. ‘No, there’s no chance.’
‘Still, Gunnar Nyberg has cut himself off from the A-Unit again. This time he’s hardly got the law on his side.’
‘Would you have done anything differently?’ asked Sara, looking Hultin in the eye.
‘Hardly,’ he said, gravely. ‘That’s why I’m not planning on taking any action against him. For the moment. We’ll see how it pans out, I suppose.’
‘I think they’re busy working on a parallel investigation,’ said Hjelm. ‘Gunnar’s pig-headedly set about getting Ludvig to tidy up after himself. And when Gunnar sets about doing something like that, he doesn’t give up. Ever.’
‘That seems likely,’ said Hultin. ‘Anyway, these are all parentheses for the moment. We’ve got to focus on saving people’s lives at the World Police and Fire Games now. We’ve got just over a day. We’ve got to start asking ourselves whether we should cancel the ceremony pretty soon. Bloody good advert for Stockholm and for the supremely competent Swedish police. We’ll be the laughing stock of the world. We should try to avoid that. Can you summarise your interrogation, Paul?’
‘Risto Petrovic is behind the whole mess. He’s got links high up among the right-wing extremists. They’re going to be supplying Niklas Lindberg with serious amounts of the liquid explosive sometime soon. Around a million kronor’s worth. It’ll be a hell of a bang. Not a ten million-krona bang, that’s true, but big enough. Stockholm Stadium’ll probably become part of the townscape of the past.
‘Worst-case scenario? He could kill thousands of people, mainly police. So how can we get to Lindberg? Four ways: through Kullberg, through Petrovic, through other acquaintances, through the right-wing umbrella organisation. The fourth is impossible in principle, we’re talking about the most shadowy organisation imaginable, people who’re probably at the top of societies all over the world, who want to see ethnic cleansing on a large scale. The second is difficult. It would only be possible if we could find a weak link in Petrovic, something which would get him to think like a person and not like a severely war-damaged sociopath. The first is probably our best bet. We loosened Agne up yesterday, we got the World Police and Fire Games out of him without him really knowing it. I think we can still get more out of him. The third is difficult, but we might have time to poke around in Lindberg’s circle of acquaintances and find… some girlfriend or boyfriend or someone else he trusts.’