Eden’s eyes were itching. Bloody contact lenses.
‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully. ‘I just want to make sure we haven’t missed something. Even if it turns out that the phone did belong to someone else, which I don’t believe, I’m still not sure that would necessarily make Zakaria a better person.’
She ended the call and turned her attention back to the file in front of her.
If Zakaria’s phone had been someone else’s at the time when Säpo linked it to their preliminary investigations, then they had to come up with a way of tracking down that person, even if Zakaria refused to give them a name. And – more importantly – they had to find out if he or she had anything to do with the hijacking.
From not having set foot in Police HQ for over a year, in the space of a few hours, Fredrika Bergman had managed to acquire a workstation within both Säpo and the National Bureau of Investigation. When she and Alex got back from Solna, they went straight up to the counter-terrorism unit, where they found Eden alone in her office.
‘I heard what happened,’ she said. ‘It’s lucky the neighbour happened to be passing just when you were there.’
‘We spoke to Karim’s wife on the way back,’ Alex said. ‘She’s staying with her parents in Copenhagen. She was shocked when she heard about the hijacking. She’s coming back to Stockholm tonight, if possible.’
‘What had he said to her?’ Eden asked.
‘Nothing, really. Everything was perfectly normal this morning, according to his wife. Karim didn’t seem stressed or anxious. We didn’t mention the fact that we think he might be involved; we just asked her a few questions in general terms.’
‘And how has he seemed recently? Has she noticed anything different about him?’
‘No, not that she could remember.’
‘What about the girl on the street, the one the neighbour saw? Did Karim’s wife know her?’
‘She’d heard about her from her daughter, of course, but she didn’t know who she was. She didn’t see her. To be honest, I don’t think the girl on the street is of any interest to us.’
Eden gazed at someone who happened to be passing by outside the glass cube. There were far too many things that didn’t seem to be of any interest.
‘He refuses to contemplate an emergency landing. And he’s been in contact with one of the phones that was used to make a bomb threat yesterday,’ she summarised. ‘I wouldn’t want to be sitting on that plane with Karim as the pilot.’
Fredrika glanced at Alex. He was pale, and she knew what was haunting him. The idea of losing his son when he had already lost his wife must be unbearable. She suppressed the impulse to reach out and touch him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Eden said, having realised that what she had just said wasn’t particularly helpful. ‘That was clumsy of me.’
‘It’s fine,’ Alex said, but anyone could see that it wasn’t.
‘Have we spoken to the airline about the possibility of giving Karim direct orders?’ Fredrika asked.
‘Yes,’ Eden said. ‘In a case like this, it’s unusual to force the captain into a course of action that he hasn’t chosen for himself. He and he alone is regarded as the best person to decide what to do with the plane in the event of a hijacking.’
‘But if the captain himself is responsible for the hijacking, then surely that should put things in a different light?’ Alex said.
‘Sounds reasonable,’ Eden agree. ‘But if the captain is the hijacker, then I think it’s foolish to believe that he’s going to take orders from the police.’
Fredrika could see that Alex was starting to get agitated.
‘We have to get in touch with Erik,’ he said. ‘He’s the co-pilot, and he’s just as capable as Karim of landing the plane.’
‘And how’s that going to happen?’ Eden said. ‘Is he going to knock Karim down first? I know the co-pilot’s role is to take over the plane if the captain shows signs of unreliability, but I don’t think that rule applies in this case. Karim is not going to hand over to Erik voluntarily.’
She got up and came around the desk to join Alex and Fredrika. In her high heels she was taller than Alex.
‘We’ve got to be clever now,’ she said. ‘Because we don’t have much time. At the moment we haven’t got enough evidence to call Erik secretly and ask him to put Karim out of action and land the plane himself. That would look like complete insanity if it got out, particularly if it all went wrong.’
If it all went wrong.
If everyone on board died.
If they had to inform all those desperate people who were calling the police right now, wanting to know if their relatives were on that plane… if they had to inform all those people that the plane had gone down, and that their loved ones were at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Fredrika shuddered.
‘If Karim is involved, it would explain something else,’ she said. ‘How the note got into the toilet.’
‘That occurred to me as well,’ Eden said.
They were interrupted by Sebastian, who yanked the door open without knocking.
‘That was quick,’ Eden said. ‘Have you already finished working through the list of calls?’
‘What list?’ Alex wanted to know.
Eden waved away his question.
‘It’s about the bomb threats that were made yesterday,’ Sebastian said.
Fredrika could see that Eden was disappointed, and wondered what she had been hoping for. She thought she would have enjoyed working with Sebastian; he seemed calmer than Eden, less spiky and more amenable.
‘You know our guys went out to Arlanda to look for the four phones that were used to make the bomb threats?’
‘The phones someone had forgotten to switch off, which meant they could still be located,’ Eden said with a nod.
‘Airport security helped them to search. It took seconds. They found all four in a waste bin in the multi-storey car park next to the domestic flights terminal.’
Alex leaned back cautiously against one of the glass walls.
‘And the voice distorter?’
‘No sign. But we’ve got the phones, and forensics have secured fingerprints. The phones were new; they found prints belonging to just one person, and on only one of the phones.’
‘One person’s prints on one phone?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And do we have a match?’
‘No. But judging by the size of the prints, it seems unlikely that they were made by a woman.’
Eden burst out laughing.
‘I don’t want to be rude, but I’m afraid no one was expecting you to find anything other than a man’s prints on those phones!’
Was that true? Fredrika wondered. From a statistical point of view, a man was more likely than a woman to be behind serious violent crime, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be a woman. She remembered the case she and Alex had worked on a few years ago: a priest and his wife had been murdered, and nothing had turned out to be the way they had first thought.
‘We have to find out if they’re Karim Sassi’s prints,’ Eden said.
‘How do we do that?’
‘Call the prosecutor. We need permission to go into their house and lift prints for comparison.’
Fredrika suddenly thought of something.
‘His car is at the airport. His wife mentioned it.’
‘Excellent. Call her and get the registration number – forget the house for now.’
‘I don’t think so.’
Alex’s voice sounded deeper than usual.
‘We don’t have time to put together some jigsaw puzzle and play guessing games,’ he said. ‘I suggest we go to the prosecutor and get a search warrant. I want to go back to Solna and turn Karim Sassi’s house upside down. We need a breakthrough, and we need it now.’
For a second, Fredrika was afraid that Eden would launch a counter-attack, put Alex in his place for taking the lead in her office. But she didn’t, because she knew he was right.