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Pärson straightened up. The movement made his chair whimper under his weight. “And how the hell do you know that?”
“I spoke to the National Forensics Lab late yesterday afternoon,” she said. She bit her lip and waited for the inevitable explosion.
Pärson’s face turned from pink to red. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me straightaway?”
Well, she thought. Partly because you’d already left several hours earlier; partly because you get annoyed if anyone calls you after work about things that aren’t a matter of life and death; but mainly because you would have seen a chance to make a bit on the side by calling the media, thereby making my job ten times harder. For a few seconds she actually considered saying all this out loud.
“We were going to tell you first thing this morning,” Amante said out of the blue. “We just wanted a chance to discuss it first. To be honest, neither of us believed that there was much urgency in a case where the victim had been dead for several months.”
Pärson glared at him, and even Julia got the evil eye before he threw himself back in his chair, which once again protested loudly.
“Bloody hell. This sort of thing needs to be reported at once; that should be obvious, surely? A connection to Skarpö changes everything. The media are going to lose it completely. The phones will be ringing off the hook. Those soft-shoed bastards must have got one of their hackers to flag up the case in the computer system. And got advance warning as soon as the lab found a match. The Security Police have been waiting for an opportunity to muscle in on the Skarpö case ever since last winter. It’s no wonder that they were so damn fast. I need to inform the head of Regional Crime right away.”
“Why do the Security Police want to get a foot in the door of the Skarpö investigation?”
Pärson glared at Julia.
“Are you hard of hearing? They want to stake out their position in the new police authority. Show that they’re worth their huge budget. If the Security Police manage to tie all the remaining loose ends in the Skarpö case and find the person who got away—the one we and National Crime have failed to find so far—it’ll make us look like incompetent idiots. Thanks a fucking bunch for that, Gabrielsson. I promise you now, I’ll be sure to tell the head of Regional Crime all about your exemplary work.”
Julia tried to control herself. She didn’t succeed as well as she usually did. And blamed it on the lack of caffeine.
“What about you, then,” she said, “just letting the Security Police stroll in and take over everything? Without so much as calling me, even though it was my case. Who did you talk to at the Security Police? What unit? What case number did he give?” She stopped herself, aware that she had crossed the line, actually way beyond it.
“Now listen,” Pärson said, leaning forward over his desk. “You’ve been in the force long enough to know that you have to take things as they come. Don’t try to blame this on me. If you’d kept me properly informed, I could have told them to go to hell—just like I want you and your little pal here to do now, before I resort to physical measures.”
As they were walking away from Pärson’s room, Amante drew her aside in the corridor. They stopped in front of a faded picture of an archipelago landscape.
“Explain what just happened to me,” he said quietly.
“I thought you’d worked it out,” she muttered. “Our work-shy boss allowed someone at the Security Police—whose name he can’t recall—to take over our case for reasons he can’t remember. And right now he’s calling his own superior and blaming the whole thing on us.”
“So we’re being taken off the case?”
“He didn’t actually say that in so many words. Not that it really matters. Without the body we haven’t got a case. No chance of making any progress. The National Forensics Lab has probably already received new orders to talk exclusively to the Security Police from now on, presumably for reasons relating to national security.”
She fell silent and nodded at a colleague walking past them.
“Okay, that’s pretty much what I thought,” Amante said when the man was out of earshot. “Just wanted to make sure.”
He leaned a bit closer to Julia as he glanced over his shoulder.
“I’ve got something I need to show you. It’s about our body.”
She raised her eyebrows and waited for him to go on. But Amante gave no indication of continuing.
“Okay,” she said. “Let me get a cup of coffee. Your room or mine?”
Amante shook his head. “Not here. In my apartment. I’ll make you coffee.”
* * *
Sarac got up from the camping mattress, switched the computer on, and sat down at the table. He stretched to shake off the half doze that had more or less replaced real sleep for him. Time was running out, his tranquilizers would last another four days, but he hoped everything would be over by then.
Three days had passed since their exchange. Frank had left shortly after the video was finished. Packed his things, gave him the key to the office, and showed him how the computer and encrypted e-mail worked before taking his leave. This time Sarac did shake his hand. He knew who Frank was now, and why he had gone to such lengths to find out the truth about Janus. But instead of trying to steal it the way he had last winter, he had offered something in exchange. A fair deal between two equal parties. Quid pro quo.
So there he was, in a shabby little office in a ramshackle building that was waiting to be demolished. A perfect hiding place.
By now they must be hunting all over for him. They’d have tracked him via the security cameras at the Central Station, and one way or another they’d have figured out that he’d been back to his apartment. But there the trail would go cold. He had taken three different buses to get out here, using a different travel card each time. All bought at different places and paid for in cash, according to Hunter’s instructions. He was safe here. Safe enough, anyway.
He had spent a whole day thinking about his next course of action. Then he made up his mind not to beat around the bush. He sent an encrypted e-mail revealing what he knew. What he wanted. But so far he hadn’t received a reply.
He logged into his online e-mail account and, as he waited for the program to load, wrapped his fingers around the bag of sleeping pills in his pocket. He counted them one more time. Odds and evens.
Debts I can’t escape till the day I die, the song in his head echoed, just as it had last Christmas.
The program opened up. There was a new message at the top of his in-box. He held his breath. Heard the music in his head get louder as he clicked to open the e-mail.
Curl your lip and make me want to live for one more day. Make me want to sleep through one more night.
An answer. One final task. His final task.
* * *
The apartment didn’t look anything like what Julia had been expecting. The lobby of the building in Östermalm was imposing, with high arches and a heavy limestone staircase with a polished teak handrail. But inside the heavy door of the apartment the furnishings were considerably more spartan.
She should really have said no. Should have made her so-called partner tell her whatever he had to say up in Police Headquarters instead of wasting time going home with him. That she went along with him without a word of protest or even asking any questions was entirely Oscar Wallin’s fault. Wallin’s and that of her own wretched curiosity.
Sadly, Amante’s apartment didn’t provide any immediate clues regarding either him or his intentions. There were three bedrooms, two of which were completely empty apart from a few dead flies on the windowsills. In the third was a folding bed, two open removal boxes, and a small, old-fashioned television on the floor. No photographs, pictures, or anything else that said anything about the person who lived there. The only rhythm echoing between the bare walls was loneliness.
“Divorce,” Amante said, confirming her impressions. “All my things are in storage. My ex-wife sent the wrong boxes here. Old vacation clothes.” He gestured toward his yacht club blazer and sweater. “She knows I hate this jacket, so she probably did it on purpose.”
He shrugged his shoulders as if to indicate that he’d said enough on the subject.
“There’s coffee in the kitchen. Hot water in the right-hand tap. I’m just going to …” He nodded toward the toilet door.
“Sure, I’ll sort it,” she said.
The kitchen was, if possible, even barer than the rest of the apartment. And expensive. Marble counters, a big wine refrigerator, a gas range with six rings. Stepfather’s money, she guessed. Maybe the apartment even belonged to him.
She couldn’t see a coffee machine but did find a jar of instant and a few mismatched mugs covered with advertising logos. One of the German taps was marked Heisswasser. She tried it and, sure enough, got scalding-hot water straight from the tap. What an idea. She filled two mugs with water, added some powder, and stirred them with a coffee-flecked chopstick she found in the sink. She shuddered. The smell from the mugs wasn’t enticing, but a splash of milk would make it bearable. She opened a large stainless steel door that she hoped belonged to the fridge. She found an open can of pea soup, a couple of greasy trays of Chinese food, and a can of low-alcohol beer. The huge kitchen was evidently completely wasted on Amante.
At the bottom of the fridge was a big yellow plastic cooler that looked brand-new. Amante had gone to the trouble of removing a couple of shelves from the fridge to make room for it, so at a guess it contained something that needed to be kept fresh. With a bit of luck there might even be some milk. She undid the straps on the side and opened the lid. She felt her heart stop for a few seconds.
She took a step back. Then another one. The fridge door slowly closed of its own accord and she was left standing with the lid in her hand.
Amante came into the kitchen.
“Did you find the coffee?” He caught her eye and stopped.
“Amante,” Julia said, trying her utmost to sound calm. “Would you mind explaining why you have the head of our dead body in your fridge?”
* * *
Sarac had pulled on his jacket and hat. Turned out the lights in the little room. He looked at the time. Ten past five, and darkness was already settling on the parking lot outside the window. Time to get going. For some reason he felt different. Almost excited. He put his hands in his pockets and felt the bag of sleeping pills. On a sudden impulse he took it out and held it up against the weak light from the window. Twenty-five oval pills. He went over to the tiny kitchen area, opened the cupboard, and tucked the bag away inside it. Then he walked out of the room and closed the door silently behind him. He was on his way now. On his way to put things right.
* * *
The coffee tasted just as disgusting as Julia had expected. But it was also the only thing in this whole situation that was remotely predictable.
“Sorry if I scared you,” Amante said. “Let me explain. I called the National Forensics Lab yesterday. Spoke to a very nice young woman who was about to finish for the day. She said she’d spoken to you about the link to Skarpö a few minutes before I called. She asked if we actually spoke to each other in Violent Crime.”
He took a sip of coffee and gave her a long look over the top of the cup. Julia said nothing, preferring to wait for him to go on instead.
“When the pathologist said we might not be able to identify our victim from DNA, I called a guy in Europol who I got to know on Lampedusa. He works as a forensics expert in Sarajevo. They’ve got a computer program that can create a three-dimensional image of a face from a layered X-ray of a skull. They use it to identify remains from the war. Obviously it’s not a hundred percent, but enough to get a photofit.” He took another swig of coffee. “The same thing must have occurred to you—that we could try to reconstruct his face some other way. That’s why you called the Forensic Medicine Unit this morning, isn’t it?”
She glared at him for a few seconds.
“The Museum of Medieval Stockholm,” she said. “They’ve got a forensic anthropologist who came up with a wax model of Birger Jarl’s face using just his skull a couple of years ago.”
“Ah, smart.” Amante nodded. “A proper model of the whole head probably works a lot better than just a photofit. But that would take longer. At least a month or so.”
“And you couldn’t wait that long. You needed to prove how smart you were.”
A hint of a blush spread across Amante’s neck. “I did actually try to call you yesterday evening. It wasn’t that hard to work out why you weren’t answering. You knew there was a link to Skarpö and you didn’t want to involve the civilian once the case started to heat up.”
Her turn to blush now, if she’d been the type. Which she wasn’t.
“I figured out that everything would change as soon as the connection to Skarpö became common knowledge,” he went on. “All manner of different police units and bosses would get involved. And the civilian would be the first person taken off the case. And I didn’t want that, not after seeing the body. After seeing what our perpetrator had done to him.” He stared at her; his anxious expression seemed to be looking for understanding.
Julia stifled a nod. Amante was saying the right things and he sounded entirely honest. But she wanted to hear the rest of the story before she made up her mind if he really was telling the truth.
Amante took a deep breath. “So, after I tried to call you last night, I drove out to the Forensic Medicine Unit. I paid the member of staff on duty two thousand kronor to let me borrow the head for twenty-four hours. I’d have gone as high as five, but he jumped at my first offer.”
He pulled a face that was probably meant to look amused.
“The plan was to get the skull X-rayed and have it back in place by now. No one would have noticed anything and it would all have been a lot quicker than filling out forms and waiting for them to be processed. But then the Security Police appeared out of nowhere to fetch the body. Without even opening the bag, apparently, which was lucky for me.”
“You must have realized that people were bound to ask questions about your photofit. Wonder where it had come from?”
He shrugged. “One thing at a time. A photofit would have been a big step forward. Paperwork can always be sorted out afterward, and it’s not as if I’ve done anything illegal.”
“Apart from bribing a public official, you mean?”
Amante smiled, a cryptic little smile that she couldn’t really make sense of. Like so much else about him. If Wallin hadn’t warned her, by this point she would have been convinced that Amante was telling the truth. But for now she still had her doubts.
“Two, actually, if we’re being strictly accurate. An X-ray operator too—a guy I know from the yacht club. But I doubt either of them would be prepared to testify. All I did was pay what the Italians call a tangente. A sort of service charge, you could say.”
“Did you learn that on Lampedusa? You know, that Italian island in the southern Mediterranean,” she added, unable to stop herself.
He looked at her for a few seconds. His smile faded. He walked over to the sink and put his cup down.
“I learned lots of things on Lampedusa. More than I would have wanted.” He turned his back on her as he rinsed the cup under the tap. Julia waited for him to go on, but Amante seemed to have clammed up.
“What do we do now?” The question was aimed at herself as much as him.
He turned the tap off and turned around.
“That was what I was thinking of asking you. As soon as the Security Police open the bag and discover that the head’s missing, all hell’s going to break loose. The smart option would be to go out to the Forensic Medicine Unit right away, pay the guy to sneak the head into one of the cold storage units, and forget the whole thing.”
She looked at him, aware that he could easily have done that without her involvement.
Amante smiled faintly again and glanced at the time. “Or we wait until ten o’clock before we decide what our next step’s going to be.”
“Why ten o’clock?”
“Because that’s when we get to see what our dead man looked like.”
* * *
Sarac was standing perfectly still in the darkened doorway. He resisted the temptation to reach out for the light switch he could see on the wooden wall. The forest behind him was dark and silent. The narrow unpaved track he had followed from the main road was only just visible at the edge of the trees on the far side of the turnaround. In the distance he could hear a raven call. The ghostly sound echoed between the trees, fading into a distant rumble. Unless it was just in his head.
The wind blowing off the ice-covered inlet cut straight through his clothes. He shivered and stepped in through the door. The soles of his boots scraped against the concrete floor. The smell inside made him think about the house on the island, and he waited for the usual accusing whispers. But for the time being the voices seemed to have fallen silent. Maybe the dead were huddled together in the darkness. Waiting for whatever was going to happen.
What was going to happen?
He didn’t really know. All he knew was that he had reached the end of the road. That the whole Janus affair was going to end here, this evening, one way or another. That everyone involved would finally have to face up to the consequences of their actions.
The rumbling in his head grew louder. The winter thunder was getting closer. Then his thoughts were interrupted by another sound. A real one this time. It sounded as if someone was approaching. Taking cautious, creaking steps through the snow outside on the path. Sarac felt his heart beat faster.
Soon, he thought. Soon it will all be over.
A dark shape appeared in the doorway. Clearly visible against the white snow.
“David Sarac?” he heard a low voice say. And at that moment he knew how it was all going to end. The voice was firm, clear, not unfriendly. This was someone who had made up their mind. Then he saw a weapon aimed toward him. Saw it being raised. He closed his eyes.
Debts I can’t escape till the day I die.
Time to pay his debts. Pay for his betrayal. Some things were simply too broken to be fixed.
“H-Here,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
A lightning flash, a frozen gust of wind right through his chest. The roar of winter thunder drowning his thoughts. Then nothing more.
* * *
The face on the screen looked real. Everything was where it should be, the proportions looked right. The nose, neither large nor small. The mouth with its hard, pursed lips, and the skin stretched across the cheekbones. The short, dark hair, the thin eyes. Even the eyelashes and brows were perfect, down to the last hair. Yet there was still something about the picture that wasn’t quite right, something Julia couldn’t put her finger on. But that didn’t really matter. A clump of ice had formed in her stomach, its chill spreading throughout her body.
“A computer simulation will never be entirely accurate,” Amante said over her shoulder. “The program uses measurements from the CAT scan—the size and angles of the bones in the face, eye sockets, and nose. Then it adds supplementary information such as hair and skin color. It all comes together to form an image that ought to be fairly close to reality. The only thing the program can’t provide is—”
