He looked at his arm where the line of digits was tattooed, and the numbers passed through him, moving away from him.
He passed further, further through the heart of the city, and death was by his side, death wanted something and he couldn’t understand what.
All he did was travel.
5
SINCE SARA SVENHAGEN was having trouble working out why she was in an unmarked police car, en route from Kungsholmen to a motel somewhere in Stockholm’s southern suburbs, her thoughts drifted back to that morning. They floated in through an elegant doorway in Birkastan, up a genuine art nouveau staircase and in through a door marked with the area’s only foreign name, through the stylish but messy kitchen of a little three-roomed flat and then into a loudly creaking marital bed. Just as she caught a first glimpse of her fiery latin lover’s olive-coloured skin, the long panning shot of her thoughts was broken by an aggressive honking of a horn. Her attention was brought back to being in the passenger seat of an unmarked police car, en route from Kungsholmen to a motel somewhere in Stockholm’s southern suburbs.
So it goes.
Kerstin Holm let out a particularly coarse string of abuse, turned round and said: ‘I am sorry.’
Sara Svenhagen pulled a face and managed to focus on her older colleague behind the wheel.
‘I don’t know what I’m meant to be forgiving,’ she answered honestly.
Kerstin Holm looked at her and smiled wryly.
‘Let me guess where you were,’ she said, giving the finger to a confused old man in a checked cap driving a silvery Volkswagen Jetta.
‘What did he do?’ Sara Svenhagen asked, still half asleep.
‘He just proved that driving licences have a best before date. Don’t try to change the subject. You were in the bedroom of a newly bought three-roomer in Birkastan. Right?’
Sara smiled weakly and felt like she had been caught red-handed. Kerstin nodded self-righteously, struggling with the lid of a stubborn pot of snus tobacco and eventually managing to push a portion of it up under her lip.
‘You still haven’t told me what it cost.’
‘It was pretty run-down…’
‘That’s a new one. Nice. Normally I hear: “We exchanged for two rentals”, “the price per square metre was surprisingly low”, and then the cryptic “second mortgage rates are pretty good at the minute”. I want a hard figure.’
‘Two point two.’
‘Thanks,’ Kerstin Holm said, accelerating gratefully.
‘Including two rentals. One of which was in Rågsved.’
‘Sounds pretty cheap.’
‘It was a good price. The price per square metre was surprisingly low. And it was pretty run-down.’
‘What did you get for your place on Surbrunnsgatan?’
‘I didn’t sell it illegally. We exchanged.’
‘Who said you sold it illegally? That came from the heart.’
‘Three hundred thousand. And I think they saw Jorge’s bloody studio in Rågsved as more of a punishment. A cross to bear.’
‘So it was up around two and a half million?’
‘Almost. We were thinking of having a house-warming party next weekend. What do you think?’
‘Sounds good.’
‘Other halves are welcome too.’
Kerstin Holm accelerated slightly less gratefully.
‘Wow, what a subtle turn of events,’ she said gloomily. ‘What a smooth interview technique.’
‘Let’s hear it now,’ Sara Svenhagen said, turning to face her. She couldn’t quite escape the feeling that Kerstin Holm was the proudest person she had ever met. Even in profile – her dark, elegant, dishevelled hair; the well-defined lines on her face – everything suggested a kind of innate proudness which, she had to admit, she admired. It had been almost a year since Sara Svenhagen had joined the A-Unit and the two women had worked together a few times, but she had never felt that she was a real, proper equal. In her eyes, Kerstin Holm was the best interviewer the police corps had to offer, and she still had plenty to learn from her. That did mean it was tough sometimes, when you knew she had seen right through you. After a conversation with Kerstin, it was as though you had no secrets left. Everything always came out. But with Kerstin herself, the exact opposite was true: she was one big mystery. So that meant it felt good to have turned the conversation around. Even though Kerstin had clearly seen straight through it.
‘I’ll be coming alone,’ Kerstin said, guiding the old Volvo out onto the E4 motorway. ‘If that’s OK with you.’
And with that, the conversation was over.
They drove in silence for a while. Both were searching for something to talk about. It wasn’t an easy task. Sometimes, it was just too awkward. Sara knew that back in the beginning, Kerstin had been with Paul Hjelm, a married man. Her own husband Jorge Chavez’s partner and best friend.
It all felt a bit complicated.
‘Is it true he’s the only darkie in the neighbourhood?’ Kerstin Holm eventually asked.
That broke the ice. The two of them laughed. It felt good.
‘It’s very, very true,’ Sara said, then, changing tack: ‘Where are we going, exactly?’
‘No idea,’ Kerstin Holm said, still laughing. ‘No, we’re going to the Norrboda Motell in Slagsta. The refugee centre is full, so the immigration authorities have been renting rooms in the motel. Apparently some of the refugees staying there have gone missing. There seems to be a whiff of international criminality to the whole place, so they’ve called us in to take the case. If it even turns out to be a case. Any other questions?’
‘What kind of whiff?’
‘The motel seems to have been a bit too self-sufficient. A whole load of smuggling has been linked to it, with the Russians and the Baltic states mostly, but there’ve also been suggestions of prostitution. And a few of the women who’ve gone missing now are suspected to have been involved in that.’
‘So in other words, a group of whores have disappeared?’
Kerstin Holm pulled a face as they drove through Skärholmen in the cool but bright May afternoon.
‘It’s looking that way,’ she reluctantly admitted.
‘Who reported it?’
‘The owner, apparently. He’s been the subject of certain suspicions himself. Jörgen Nilsson’s his name.’
‘What kind of suspicions?’
‘Not seeing, saying or doing anything. But he’s been cleared. Reporting this is probably just a way of showing us that he’s on the right side.’
Sara Svenhagen leaned back in the worn-out passenger seat. She was forced to admit that she didn’t quite understand the priorities of Swedish immigration policy. From certain countries, primarily the EU member states, it was clearly possible to immigrate quite freely. Becoming a Swedish citizen was no problem. But from others, it seemed to be a completely impossible task. To even stand a chance, you had to seek asylum and claim to be a refugee. That meant you had to make sure not to stop off in any other countries along the way. If you managed that trick – which in itself meant increasing numbers of deaths, with people suffocating in containers or dying of dehydration in the boats transporting them – then you ended up in a refugee centre while your case was considered. The combination of growing numbers of asylum seekers, tougher regulations and more sweeping staff cuts meant that waiting times were becoming more and more absurd, the refugee centres brimming over and being outsourced to private businesses, usually second-rate motels and hostels. There, you would find people with terrible experiences behind them, rotting away in some kind of limbo for years on end. Sara couldn’t quite understand how they were then expected to become integrated, functional citizens – nor how so many people actually managed it.