She was no longer sinking, she was falling. She struck the door to the kingdom of the dead. It was a door. A normal front door. She was standing outside. Her body was almost squeezing through it, slowly, painfully.
The short one shrugged and stepped to one side.
The injured one made his way over from the door. His baggy army trousers were bulging at the flies. He leaned forward. She could see the pain in his eyes as he grabbed at her trousers. He yanked them down, ripping them off with such force that her shoes came off. She could feel her left foot twisting strangely. Then he pulled down his own trousers. His pants. She was staring at his erection. He climbed onto her, pushing it towards her face. The stench of sweat and unwashed genitals washed over her.
She was through the door. She was there. In that place. Hades’ shadowy depths. She saw his penis coming towards her. She could smell the stench of sweat and unwashed genitals. She could see the flash bulbs. She could see pictures of children. She could hear screams that must have been her own. And she turned away. She wasn’t there. Looked out of the window, thinking. Defence mechanism. The street outside the window. Cars passing by. Number plates. AGF. Agfa film. BED. English for where you sleep. DTR. Dithyramb, whatever that was. EID. Eider. Or first eid. Though that wasn’t how it was spelt. And in the background, behind the dark clouds, the flower shop, the video shop, the barber, the bank.
The bank.
The door flew open. She heard shots. The man on top of her was hit, bellowed and fell. A sticky liquid ran onto her.
Chaos everywhere.
And in chaos was the beginning.
The police station in Skövde was what you might call understaffed. The duty officer was the only one there. The rest of the little force were in town. Two were taking care of a break-in which had taken place at a supermarket warehouse the night before, the others were on patrol. As a result, the duty officer found it quite strange to have seven plain-clothes officers inside the station.
He was sixty-one years old and eagerly anticipating retirement.
‘Are you sure you shouldn’t call the National Task Force?’ he asked for the fourth time.
Though his question touched upon an unpleasant truth, Jan-Olov Hultin had started ignoring him.
He considered his team. All members of the A-Unit were in place. They were gathered around two maps. The first was a town map of Skövde. The second was a detailed plan of a building.
‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ said Hultin. ‘The hotel’s here, on the edge of town. The lone young woman who signed herself in as Sonja Karlsson, and who’s probably our Eurydice, is in a room on the corner on the ground floor. Here. There are two ways in, one from inside the hotel, one via the terrace. Besides that, there are windows on the opposite wall, though we don’t really know how high up they are. Two go in via the terrace, Hjelm and Holm. Two standing by the window, Chavez and Nyberg; take pallets to stand on. Three go in via the main door, myself, Norlander and Söderstedt. Everyone in flak jackets.
‘First, we’re going to check what’s going on inside. Contact via walkie-talkie. If Lindberg’s gang is there, Norlander’s going to kick the door down. Everyone else wait until you hear the door break. Then you storm in. Exercise caution. It might be a hostage situation. Which could mean calling in the National Task Force. But that’ll take time. The best thing’s obviously if we can catch them off guard. We know they’re not likely to give themselves up without a fight. Any questions?’
‘Neighbours?’ asked Söderstedt.
‘The hotel’s clapped-out and not very popular. It’s almost empty. The adjacent rooms are empty. Any neighbours are a long way off. We can’t evacuate them all without drawing attention to what we’re doing. If they’re there, anyway. My feeling is that we can carry this out without putting anyone other than ourselves in danger.’
‘And Eurydice,’ said Söderstedt.
‘Though if they’re there then she’s already in real danger. OK. Let’s go.’
They went out to two rental cars and drove slowly and carefully through Skövde until the built-up area began to thin out. They soon arrived.
It was 10.26 on Saturday 10 July.
It was a miserable day. The rain was pouring down. The kind of bad weather that seems to want revenge on all those halcyon days, to even out the statistics. Visibility was nil. They switched their walkie-talkies on, put their earpieces in, and set off.
All headed in the direction of the unassuming little hotel’s entrance apart from Hjelm and Holm, who made off around the building. Nyberg and Chavez split off by the stairs, each with a pallet in hand, and crept carefully along the hotel wall to the corner by the garden; they were heading for the windows on the corner. Hultin, Norlander and Söderstedt entered the hotel lobby. A budget version of a bellboy was loitering by the reception counter.
‘Room 12,’ said Hultin, showing his ID. ‘A young woman. We spoke on the phone a few hours ago.’
The bellboy barely reacted to the sight of the detective superintendent’s ID. All that happened was that he dropped his gaze to the register lying open on the counter in front of him.
‘Karlsson,’ he drawled. ‘Sonja Karlsson. She’s got visitors.’
‘Four men?’ asked Hultin.
‘Three. One just left.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Five minutes, maybe. Ten.’
‘Car?’
‘I heard one start. But it wasn’t parked outside.’
‘OK,’ said Hultin. ‘Lock yourself in the office for a while.’
The imitation bellboy opened his eyes fully for the first time. That was his only reaction. Then he disappeared into another room.
Hultin, Söderstedt and Norlander entered the corridor through double doors, drawing their service weapons. Slowly, they moved towards room 12. The number glimmered like a mirage from the door at the end of the corridor.
Hjelm and Holm took the back route. They came in from the opposite corner of the hotel, working their way past a row of unoccupied terraces, each marked off with high fences covered in climbing plants. At the last fence, they stopped. Hjelm nodded, Holm peered around the corner.
‘Hard to see,’ she whispered. ‘Fucking rain.’
‘We’re in position,’ Gunnar Nyberg whispered into the walkie-talkie. ‘There are curtains. We’ve got movement, but not much else.’
‘We can’t see a thing,’ said Holm. ‘We’ve got to get closer.’
‘They should be there,’ whispered Hultin. ‘We’ve got confirmation that three of them are there. Repeat: three are there, one’s missing.’
‘Eurydice?’ asked Nyberg.
‘Her too. They’ve probably got their weapons on her. Extreme caution advised. We’re right outside the door, we need to know exactly what’s happening. Paul, Kerstin?’
‘We’re moving closer now.’
Kerstin Holm crept forward first. The saturated grass squelched loudly. Hjelm was hot on her heels. Only when they were halfway there could they see the door properly. It was a classic terrace door: wooden bottom half with glass on top, and a small set of steps below it. They crept over to the steps, keeping low. They were soaked through, wiping the water from their faces. Hjelm pointed at himself. He rose slowly. Forehead, eyes, up over the edge of the window. Water was streaming down the glass.